The Other Hand

Grice notes that there are levels in speech:

-- informal
-- formal
-- abformal

but also

-- undictive
-- dictive
-- indictive

His example:

"My brother in law lives in a peak in Darien; his aunt, on the other hand, was a nurse during the Phoney War".

He focuses on 'on the other hand'.

"What can the utterer be possibly meaning by it?" (WoW: RE).

He concludes some sort of 'contrast' but which is not _meant_ as per entailment, but as per 'implicature' of the conventional type.

It corresponds not to the ground-floor level of 'central' forces: which for Grice remain: stating or ordering. It rather corresponds to a higher-level of non-central forces: contrasting, adding, comparing, ironising, etc. These are 'implicature' levels. Some 'conventional' or nondetachable (as in 'on the other hand') some detachable.

It's usually the right one, with Grice (hand I mean)